Splendor in the "s" . . .

Horace Jeffery Hodges
and
Bruno Littlemore,
The Greats

. . . and glory on the door.

My department has a new professor, a woman, and since she had no available office, I volunteered to share mine, partly because I use it only for storing books and records - the English Lounge is my place to meet students, for they have plenty of room to sit and wait if several show up at the same time.

Anyway, the staff in charge of adding names to doors added the name of the new professor to my door . . . and removed my name! I therefore contacted the TAs in my department for help:

My name is no longer on my door. I think that the administration thought that when I volunteered to share my office with a woman, that meant I was moving out of my office. Could my name be put back on my door?

A prompt response came:

Your name on the door will be engraved soon. Probably the person in Facility Team made a mistake. How do you want your name to be written? H. J. Hodges, Horace Jeffery Hodges, or Horace J. Hodges?

I'd never been given such wide-open choice, so I went for the gold:

Thanks. I want my name written Horace Jeffery Hodges the Great.

I waited for my glory to be recognized, but when I checked the other day, not only was "the Great" missing, so was the "s" of my family name Hodges:

Horace Jeffery Hodge

I turned again to the TAs for help:

Thank you for the help with my name. Unfortunately, the person in Facility Team made another mistake. Instead of "Horace Jeffery Hodges" on my door, there is "Horace Jeffery Hodge." In other words, my family name is lacking the final "s." This is easy to fix because the door has space at the end of "Hodge" for an "s."

I then added a PS:

PS "the Great" was also missing, but there's no space on the door for that.

The TAs replied:

The Facility Team told me that missing "s" of your name will be revised soon. Thank you for understanding the Great was missing because there's no space on the door for that.

I figured that was good enough - my greatness is recognized, but it is too great for the commonplace doors of our quotidian world . . .

That's glory for you!